


Mother

by idrilhadhafang



Series: The Broken Edge Deleted Extended and Alternate Scenes -- Ben's childhood [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Bashing, Character Study, Deconstruction, Gen, M/M, POV Leia Organa, some concept bashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 08:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12128418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: The evolution of Ben and Leia's relationship as mother and son over the years.





	Mother

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_Baby:_

When Ben's born, she promises to herself that she's going to do what she can to protect him. He's so fragile, so tiny, that she wants to keep him safe from the galaxy and what it has to offer. She doesn't know what's going to happen, but she won't end up like her biological parents. 

 

_One year old:_

Ben is one year old when she walks in on him laughing and clapping, babbling to some sort of presence that isn't there. It's a too familiar presence, smothering heat like Tatooine and Jabba's sail barge, and yet it can't be, can it? She must be hallucinating, she must be. Or paranoid. Her son is safe, isn't he? 

 

 

_Two years old:_

Ben is two years old the first time she's afraid of him. They say it's normal, the terrible twos, but there have been instances where Ben's accidentally knocked over a lamp in one of his fits -- not physically, but with the Force. She knows he doesn't mean it, but she's afraid nonetheless. A toddler with such powers...who knows what he could do?

Mothers are supposed to be nurturing, the expectations go. Mothers aren't supposed to be scared of their own children. And yet Leia is, all the while.

 

_Three years old:_

There are times she envies Shara and her easy bond with Poe. She can see them laughing together, and she wonders what exactly she's doing wrong. Then again, Poe is an easy child. Poe doesn't have temper tantrums. (Then again, Ben was only two, wasn't he? It wasn't a big deal, was it?) Poe doesn't argue. Poe doesn't have Force powers either. Leia almost wishes that Ben could be uncomplicated, like Poe, but she never tells Shara that. She keeps it to herself, like everything else, locked in a box inside herself that only she can open -- and she doesn't dare to open it. 

 

_Four years old:_

Han's angry at her for sending Ben away. She can feel as much -- the idea that one day, she'll lose Han and Ben both and it will have something to do with her decision.

 

_Thirteen years old:_

When Ben contacts her about slavery, she has to admire his passion. It's one of those few parts of herself that she can see in a young boy that is mostly her late, detested father. 

(She knows that reincarnation doesn't exist except in Milaran cultures, but sometimes she wonders if Ben is her father reincarnated. Like she has to take a turn actually raising her father, like this is some test for her to forgive him, to understand)

She encourages him. More than encourages him. She pushes him to do it, to follow his dream of stopping injustice. The more he shows that he has more of his parents in him than even she thinks, the better. 

 

_Sixteen years old:_

She isn't blind, exactly, to how Ben feels. Sometimes she swears that she can feel it in the way that he talks about Poe, the way his eyes light up, and she has to admit that she is afraid. What if Ben ends up making the same mistakes her father did? What if, what if, what if seems to be an overriding worry. 

Ben is different. She knows that. From the day he was in her womb he's had a potential for good or evil. She only hopes he makes the right choice. 

 

_Eighteen years old:_

She unfortunately can't come to Ben's Knighting ceremony. She wishes she could; she really is proud of him. And yet she's so held up with duties in the Senate and things of that nature that she finds that she can't come to her own son's Knighting ceremony. She doesn't like the idea of actually not coming to her son's Knighting ceremony, so she asks Luke how it went. 

"It went beautifully," Luke says. Silence. "You really should have been there, Leia. I mean, Ben would have loved to see you."

"You think I wouldn't have wanted to?"

"Of course not. But it would have meant so much to him."

And even at that, Leia can't help but feel sick. If she had been there...but she has a job to do. 

She just wishes she could participate more. Be a mother to her son. And she wonders, once again, if sending him away was such a good idea. 

 

 

_Twenty years old:_

Her son calls her up when he and Poe Dameron first get into a relationship. His face is radiant with happiness over their call, and she hates to be the one to put out that light, but she ends up having to anyway. 

The happiness fades even as he takes in her expression, replaced with concern. "You don't approve?"

She tries to explain to him, of course. She tries. She can't tell him about Vader, though. She doesn't know how. And even after she's logged off, she wishes she could tell him about Vader, but the problem is, how would she even begin?

 

 

_Twenty two years old:_

Explaining the second time doesn't go as well.

Long after she signs out, she's still angry. How dare her own son talk about the Order like that, when she sent him there to protect him? How dare he act so disobedient and ungrateful and spoiled, how dare he all but court the Dark Side? Never mind that he and Poe both aren't the stablest of people to marry; Ben's nothing more than a spoiled brat thinking that Leia would unquestioningly support their marriage, support them without a doubt. Never mind that they obviously didn't refuse Ben enough, didn't say "no" enough. And Poe...

 

_Kylo Ren:_

It's after Ben becomes Kylo Ren that Leia starts hearing Snoke's voice in her mind, taunting her about how she failed Ben. Sometimes it's really Snoke, sometimes it's her own guilt with Snoke's voice, but nonetheless, they're right either way: she failed him. 

She had never given him a chance. She only saw Vader in him. She never saw the good, and now she's feeling it even as Snoke, the real Snoke, taunts her over their link. Shows her what he's doing, how he's growing in power and skill.

 _You chained him._  the voice of Snoke says, and she can feel his simmering fury over the link, the hatred for every living thing. _You restrained him, you burdened him, you imprisoned him. Perhaps the Enclave was a very pretty cage, but it was still a cage. You put him there because you hated him._

_I wanted to protect him from you._

_And a very shoddy job you did at it too,_ Snoke says. _You despised him. You feared him. Do you think that I am a fool? I watched you, I studied you, and I knew the depths of your hatred. Hatred for a boy who turned out too much like your father. You saw his childish outbursts as proof that he would go dark._

And Leia can't deny it. Snoke's wrong about her hating Ben, but he's right about her seeing possibilities of going dark in him.

_Even now, you prefer another. Poe Dameron. I never understood what you or Kylo Ren saw in him. Perhaps he's more pliable, in your eyes._

_No..._

_He would do anything to play the part, wouldn't he? Anything to forget the failure son, the failure husband. Anything._

_You're wrong about Poe._ Of course, Poe has no idea what happened. Will he change his mind when he realizes what happened to Ben?

He can't possibly, of course; he loves Ben. He always has, always will. And so does she.

Does she? Does she still love Ben? It doesn't give her any pleasure to think of killing her own son, but what if she has to do it anyway? 

Leia turns away. Somehow, she doesn't want to think about it.

 

 

 _Replacement_ :

There are times when she wonders what it would be like if Ben and Poe switched places, if Ben wasn't her son, and she's ashamed of it. 

Poe is everything she could want in a son. A skilled pilot, the best pilot in the Resistance actually, where Ben didn't pilot much, obedient where Ben was headstrong, headstrong but not threateningly so, untainted, clean. He's not fundamentally broken and wrong like Ben was. Ben was all broken pieces, Poe is whole, Ben was headstrong, tainted, Poe is obedient, clean. Poe got along so easily with his mother before her untimely death; Leia was frequently torn between fearing and loving her son.

Mayve Poe's her second chance. It's shameful to say, but Ben was the wrong child. They were not cursed, but they still had a child who was born wrong, hunted ruthlessly as a result. 

Born wrong. It's an uncomfortable truth, but still a truth. Ben was born wrong. Poe was born right. And maybe, just for a moment, Leia doesn't want a child who was born wrong. 

 

 

 _Redemption_ :

When she meets Ben again, it's when she's long dead and Ben's unconscious. At least she gets to apologize to him. It's an apology long overdue, she thinks, but at least she got to it.


End file.
